"We got our hands on Microsoft's new Surface, and to its credit, it lasted a good twenty minutes before we decided to tear it open," the iFixit gang remarked at the beginning of their excursion, once again putting spudgers and Torx screwdrivers in hand to make a tech product bend to their will.

Officially known as the "Microsoft Surface with Windows RT," the base model tablet starts at $499, essentially matching Apple's full-sized iPad, but doubling the storage to 32GB and offering a few appealing extras, including USB 2.0, HDMI out and even an SD card slot to expand storage beyond that which Redmond has endowed it with.

Microsoft also gets higher marks for the Surface battery, which is still glued onto the frame but much easier to remove than the one found on the iPad. The tablet also includes chips from suppliers like NVIDIA, Samsung, Micro, Texas Instruments, Marvell, Wolfson and Cypress Semiconductor.

So how does it rank for repairability? iFixit gave it a score of four out of 10 -- Microsoft's Surface proved a challenge to open, requiring both a heat gun "and lots of patience" to get access to the glass and LCD, which are fused together and "strongly" adhered to the case.

Looks like Surface fans may want to get an extended warranty on their new special friend…